


after a long separation

by ioncehadabrain



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: AU, F/M, Freeform, same old cliched shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-23 22:12:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14942289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ioncehadabrain/pseuds/ioncehadabrain
Summary: "Yexiansheng, all encounters in this world are reunions after a long separation."





	after a long separation

Somewhere in this day and age:

he would come knocking on her door and give her a book — a children's book, illustrated with vivid glittering sun-dappling stained-glass impressions and post-scripts. The kind that looks magical, each frame and each little flowery dotted line beyond any doubts a portal to another world, the kind that shines through time, the kind that, if ever set on fire and burnt through the night, would, by the next dawn, settle into ashes, and then, pixie dust.

The book would tell the story— of a universe on the other side of the wormhole?— or of how things catch on fire? Such is his area of expertise, he should know: a world built on little chemical reactions in chains and in tows. As for her, behind the camera, in a dark room: light bursts into her soul, the sensation shaking her to the core. She thinks briefly of electricity, of the pride of sacrifice, of sparks flashing as bullets leave their barrel: another candlelight is gone.

The book that is a portal glimpsing into another world, once upon a speck of dust on their shoulders:

a little girl, in her cold room, resenting the world.

a boy, on his aunt’s long table, feeling the universe at his fingertips for the first time.

he buried himself in treatises and arrays and books and the barest sketches of what constituted to happiness.

she buried herself in shadows of shut doors and stolen time, shared with handwritten notes where lingered the ghost of someone who once lived and must have loved her very much. but what kept her from his sight for the better part of their yet-to-be acquaintance was the duty she had taken upon herself to keep the barest minimum of some semblance of a house decently managed — she was like the stoic quiet master of the house in her remains of the day, and the irony was particularly biting because what days had she lived? her mind wandered to another land, though, another sky, a place beyond the sad grey clouds of the village, beyond the sky that must be clear above, beyond and far away, further away, away from here and now, away away away— away.

there, they had lived their life separately next to each other, reluctant neighbors in passing, like ships passing in the night – was this where their story started?

it must have some similar elements, she muses quietly to herself, for here, she first found him behind a pile of books, by her father’s side.

Her father has always been a man of excellent mind and terrible affection, both of which have inflicted upon her some experience she considers decisively marks who she is now, and still can’t help but wonder who she would be had she been allowed to do without that first dramatic act spanning over her childhood and the early years of her adolescence. When he was alive, she thought she should hate his breathing guts. And yet, his death has left her in a destabilizing state of lament lasting for years, even until now, although she knows it must end somehow: it has before, the first time around, and a thousand times after.

Like a soldier, she marches. Like a tower, she stands tall.

She knows that when she does fall, she would fall hard. All that love, tugged away and scattered and buried, retreating into the walls of her veins, all but waiting for a day to seep back into her blood and run all over her body, carried by the hemoglobin with the oxygen and pumped back into her heart, and together with everything else would give her—

—life.

.

.

.

_"you are brave to love so much, Riza. I admire you, and I adore you, you have no idea."_

_"that is because I have had plenty of time to save up, Roy. now, I give it to you."_

.

.

.

Theirs is an awkward first hug.

She looked at him. He saw on her face a bit of wariness?— understandable, in her study, five in the morning— curiosity, anticipation?— thirteen days since her coffee had burned his left hand and since she had told him of the burn scars on her back, he had wanted to tear down his late teacher’s battered bookshelves, she had stopped him and— a smile. Well-hidden, in the corner of her eyes, the smile he has trained himself to catch throughout the hundreds of times she has looked at him like this. Beads of cold sweat trailed down his back underneath layers of sweater — he found them less of an inconvenience and more of a physical manifestation of what they would call a wave of relief washing over himself.

He gave her the book.

She accepted it.

She paused occasionally as she peeled of the wrapping paper, to spare him a few glances, her fingers tracing his hand-doodles of various little anthropomorphic flames— why, he was studying one night when he zoned out and belatedly realized then that he had been thinking of her, she has been reigning in his mind!— and she rolled her eyes, kind and thoroughly amused, before resuming the task at hand.

By the time she was done, the light reflected upon the gilded words on the cover was caught in her eyes, and in her throat, he imagined, quite a long breath.

She couldn't quite believe it. She looked up: through her lovely eyelashes, he could see she was searching his face for something, not an answer or a confirmation, but something else entirely.

(since as early as the beginning he had let her slide onto his mind and had been keeping her there, quiet and steady, a thousand wonderful images of her, a thousand excerpts of her, echoing in his mind, day and night. and finally, finally now, she was letting him in hers, as she gazed into his mind: it was always a two-way ride)

"I found it ... I thought I knew the book when you mentioned the glittering illustrations and something chemistry. So I went and looked for it and, well, there it was. Is. Yours to keep, if you would have it."

_Yours, if you would have me._

He rubbed the back of his neck and turned his head sideways, her golden fringe shining at his peripheral gaze.

He could feel her letting out the breath she had been holding. When he turned to face her again, hand dropping from his neck, the light and the water in her eyes were trembling as if calling to a distant time. He could feel himself slipping into them — her eyes and all the wonders he had yet to understand — to be lost in them.

She reached for his neck, and she hugged him then.

She hugged him. His hand that was still hovering in mid-air over the back of her neck froze still, in mid-air. Her book that she just accepted from his hand caught between them, somewhere in the middle of the space between their chests. Their backs were stiff, he didn't quite know where to land his arms and her neck was killing her.

But she was leaning into him. As for him: he had long resolved himself to hold all the ruins she carried on her back.

The book pressed tight and sound at some point near his heart.

She tilted to whisper into his ears:

“I would. I will.”

_I always will._

.

.

.

Naturally, there are a million of stories they would like to tell, but here is one they think— hope— they would find themselves in, again and again: one in which they have always been in love, even before their time began.

**Author's Note:**

> uh. wow. see, i wanted this to have a plot. but i don't see that happen any time soon, as i have been holding the draft hostage against myself, like how all the memes go these days. and especially now that i'm feeling viciously victimized by wong kar-wai, i reckon it is time to let go of this, just so i could pull a quote and cry to myself.


End file.
